Fighting resumes on Lebanese border

Hezbollah guerrillas clashed with Israeli soldiers on the southern Lebanese border today, reviving a two-day old confrontation that saw some of the heaviest fighting in years.

It was unclear what provoked the flare-up. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television said guerrillas engaged an Israeli army unit that had crossed the Lebanese border.

But Israeli security officials said Israeli troops opened fire as they were trying to help an Israeli civilian who had inadvertently flown into Lebanon in a hangglider.

The Israeli troops fired on Hezbollah and opened a gate in the border fence to allow the hangglider pilot to run back into Israel, the security officials said. The officials said Israeli troops did not enter Lebanon.

The guerrillas were apparently trying to capture the Israeli, who would have been a prize asset for Hezbollah in future negotiations for a prisoner exchange with Israel.

Lebanese security officials said the hangglider must have been blown off course by the wind. They said the incident occurred in the Meiss el-Jabal area.

Hours earlier, Israeli planes dropped thousands of leaflets denouncing Hezbollah guerrillas over Lebanon’s capital of Beirut and its southern province.

The dropping of the pamphlets was clearly an attempt to turn Lebanese people against the guerrilla group, which a senior UN official has blamed for the flare-up in fighting.

Hezbollah attacked Israeli military posts on the southern Lebanese border on Monday, provoking Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling in an exchange that lasted several hours. Four guerrillas were killed and 11 Israeli soldiers wounded.

“Hezbollah is causing enormous harm to Lebanon,” the leaflets said in Arabic, adding that Israel was determined to protect its citizens.

The Lebanese government condemned the drop, with Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh saying Israeli violations of Lebanese territory were a threat to peace.

“We seek calm and stability, but this calm and stability must include our airspace, waters and all our land,” Salloukh said .

Hezbollah dismissed the leaflets as “an expression of Israeli failures in facing Hezbollah,” said the group’s media chief, Mohammed Afif.

“To the Lebanese citizens,” read one of the leaflets that landed on Beirut’s seafront. “Who protects Lebanon? Who is lying to you? Who is sending your children to a battle they are not ready for? Who wishes the return of the destruction? Who is the tool in the hand of his Syrian and Iranian masters?”

The note was signed “The State of Israel”.

The leaflets landed in many parts of the city, including the Palestinian refugee camps in south Beirut. Pamphlets were also dropped over southern Lebanon, the province that borders northern Israel and which is effectively under Hezbollah’s control. Lebanon has refused to deploy its army in the province saying it will not defend Israel’s border.

In Jerusalem, the Israeli military confirmed its planes had dropped the leaflets over Lebanon.

In June, an Israeli aircraft also dropped pamphlets over Lebanon calling on its government to take control of the border area and put a stop to Hezbollah attacks.

A Lebanese analyst said an Israeli attempt to undermine Hezbollah by exploiting Lebanese-Syrian tension would backfire.

“Any Israeli involvement in the disputes between Lebanon and Syria will have the opposite effect,” Sateh Noureddine told The Associated Press. Noureddine, who writes a column for As-Safir newspaper, which has taken a line close to Hezbollah and Syria, added that Israeli interference was likely to make the Lebanese and Syrians close ranks.

The reason for Monday’s flare-up, after several months of calm, is unclear. Hezbollah is a close ally of Syria and it may have been encouraged to attack to take pressure off the Damascus government, which is facing an UN investigation into the February assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri.

Hezbollah has denied it started Monday’s fighting. But the UN under-secretary-general for political affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, issued a statement yesterday that laid the blame on Hezbollah, saying the shooting started on the Lebanese side of the border.

Hezbollah used to enjoy wide support among Lebanese people for its role in leading the guerrilla war against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, an 18-year occupation that ended with Israel’s withdrawal in 2000. But Hezbollah’s popularity has fallen in recent months as it sided with Damascus despite hundreds of thousands of Lebanese taking to the streets to demand that Syria withdraw its troops in the wake of Hariri’s assassination.

After Syria withdrew its forces in April, Hezbollah continued to support Syria despite popular sentiment that it had a role in Hariri’s killing.

The UN investigation has said the truck bombing that killed Hariri and 20 other people could not have been carried out without the complicity of Syrian and Lebanese intelligence.

Syria, which rejected the investigation’s findings, is currently trying to negotiate a venue for the UN probe to interview six of its top security officials. It has rejected the investigators’ preferred venue – Beirut.

The UN Security Council warned Syria this month that it must cooperate fully with the investigation or face further action.